Soft moist lips are good news throughout the year.

In the last few years, lip glosses and new shades of lipsticks have flooded the Indian market. This broadens the whole idea of lip make-up.

The texture of your lips must always be satiny smooth. To soften chapped, sore or peeling lips, use a good lip balm or chap-suck overnight.

Lipstick not only makes your mouth soft and moist, it also helps define your lips and make your teeth look whiter than they actually are.

For tips on applying lipstick, look up the chapter on Make-up.

LIPS. LIPS. LIPS

We love lipstick. But we don't like the way it disappears, literally "eaten" off the Lips. So here are the secrets of how to apply lipstick so it stays put, long-lasting Lipsticks that live up to their hype - and some good-enough-to-eat natural choices.

The secret to long-lasting lipstick isn’t just the lipstick itself — it's in the art of application. If you .don't already, consider using a liner pencil to extend the length of time your lipstick stays put. Quite simply, use it to outline your lips, using short, feathery strokes rather than long lines — that's when lip-liner tends to wander. If you have big lips and yon want to play them down, draw just inside the natural lip-line. If you have small lips and you want to enhance them, you can accentuate the outer edge of the lip-line by drawing along the very outside edge of that line — but don't ever leave a gap between the drawn line and your own lip. You can even try this trick from Trish Me Evoy (with a bit of practice): 'When you're using the pencil to outline the cupid's bow - just above the middle of the top lip — use the pencil to draw in two soft '"mountain peaks". The effect is lo make lips look plumper.

• Once you've outlined your lips, color them in with the liner —just as if you were using a crayon or felt-lip in a child's coloring book. This creates the base to which lipstick adheres, and also slightly stains the lips so that when the lipstick/gloss wears off, something's left, • Never use a sharp lip pencil - blunt the ends by drawing backwards and forwards on the back of your hand, to soften (and warm) it.

• Nobody needs more than one lip pencil — and it should be as close as possible to the natural color of your own lips, so that when your lipstick wears off, your lips aren't encircled by an obvious line. For a softer effect, you can apply the lip pencil alter your lipstick; the liner and lipstick blend - and the result is they both last a bit longer. To soften the line, if you nerd to, you can smudge with a finger.